Chapter Text
Shoulders screaming for relief, Ichigo shifted in the metal chair he was bound to, zip ties cutting burning lines into his wrists. His fingers and palm were sticky with blood, numb from hard plastic digging into his skin.
The rain assaulting the building sounded more like handfuls of gravel thrown in sheets over a metal roof, a thousand drumming fingers. It filled the cold space of the warehouse with a low roar of sound, the patter of small waterfalls sneaking through fractures and fissures in a forgotten roof.
Never before had he hated the rain so much; it was the symphony of his demise. Running water would cancel out any magic cast to find him, washed away into the gutter with any hope he might make it out of this alive.
Ichigo was alone.
His captor wasn't familiar to him. Greased back hair, black gloves and a black jacket. He had heeled boots. Expensive ones, not work shoes. It was a small heel, for function and style, but it made his footsteps so distinct.
Ichigo wouldn't call himself a coward, but hours of this had his skin crawling when he heard the slap boots in growing puddles.
He actually hadn't remembered what day it was until his captor read a text aloud from his phone in a voice dripping in mock cheer. "Happy birthday, Kurosaki-kun! I wish I could be there. Missing you."
Boots had laughed, talked about what he'd do to her if she was there. Ichigo tuned him out, but he was angrier than he'd been before, he had no doubt that man would have followed through.
He could blame his situation on a serious of shitty coincidences, but that felt unfair. Nothing he'd been after should have been this dangerous, he'd have prepared better. So he reasoned he had to be tied to a chair in a derelict building for a reason. If there was no reason, he was just an unfortunate statistic, and there would be one less mage in the world.
His head snapped back under a solid punch to his jaw. Pain throbbed through his skull and into his brain, He didn’t even have the breath left for insults, he just panted, blood pooling on his tongue and oozing from a split lip onto his bare chest. The man hit him again, his vision blurring under the shock. His ears were ringing and his head ached enough to dull the pounding of his knuckles into his teeth. What was more pain?
He couldn’t remember what Boots wanted anymore, but either they got it, or discovered he didn’t have it, because this guy was gonna kill him. His twenty-third birthday and he was going to die, beaten to death in some godforsaken warehouse.
A chuckle was noticeable between buckets of pouring rain, and he ignored it, certain it was Boots, mocking him.
Coughing through a mouthful of blood, Ichigo couldn’t even manage a venomous insult.
His eyes refocused on the circle on the ground. The only part of that godforsaken warehouse that was still dry. The chalk circle was unmarred, a perfect white ring encircling him and the metal chair he was bound to. All of his magic was cut off to him by that simple, white line; Ichigo called and called with no answer.
Not only was he gonna die, but he was going to die powerless and alone, beaten like a chained dog.
He kept trying, trying and failing, no matter how much he knew a circle would stop his magic.
Another laugh, this one closer, menacing in the way laughter was never meant to occupy the same space as torture.
Then, a whisper against the nape of his neck. “Happy birthday, King.”
A prickle of fear crawled up his spine. It was a voice he couldn’t hear, but felt soak into his thoughts all the same. Great, now he was hallucinating.
The floodlight trained on him flickered, temporarily casting the warehouse into darkness. It stuttered back to full brightness, and Ichigo tracked the man’s boots as he left the circle, crossing over to the floodlight. He kicked it, rubber squeaking on metal. It glowed brighter, brighter, then exploded in a shower of glass, pitching the warehouse into darkness.
Ichigo panted, watching the dark in confusion. It seemed unlikely that a power surge would blow up a
floodlight,
but what else could it be? He'd given up hope of being rescued, so maybe this was just a new and exciting way to die.
Without the hum of electricity, the warehouse was eerily quiet. The scuff of boots was sharp, echoing off rusted, corrugated walls amid the persistent drone of rainfall. Ichigo’s eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, squinting when a flashlight glared in swollen and stinging eyes. Rolling his head to the side, the man slapped him, grabbing a fistful of hair. Ichigo was aware enough to hear some of it, it sounded like he was accusing him.
If his grip on consciousness wasn’t so tenuous, Ichigo thought he might have cause for concern.
That laugh was back, but this time, his captor reacted as if he heard it too. The man let go, whipping the flashlight into the murky corners of the warehouse. Ichigo heard his footsteps fade, lost in the sound of rain. That same voice spoke again, softly, like they weren’t even talking to him. “I hate the rain.” Same, hallucination. Same.
Someone touched him, fingers grasping his chin to force his attention. Ichigo blinked blearily up at this new person, wondering why they were so gentle. They were pale, like a ghost, eyes sharply yellow among black. “Are you real?” he slurred.
“Course I’m real, King.”
“That’s just...what my hallucination would tell me...”
Their hand slid around to the back of his head, and they dropped down so they were nearly nose to nose. “You wanna live?”
Ichigo tried to laugh, but it came out sounding like he’d just been punched. “Yeah,” he croaked. “Yeah, I do.”
His hallucination smiled, teeth perfect and dazzling, canines glinting like a mad dog. The ghost leaned in close, scorching hot despite the rain. His breath was fiery against his split lips, soothing in its intensity. His ghost kissed him. Ichigo couldn’t imagine why his hallucination would wanna kiss him. He was bruised and bleeding and broken, it was far from sexy. It felt important, a soul-sealing handshake from which there was no escape.
All his pain and misery were swept away with that brief and savage kiss. There was a single moment of acute clarity; the rain stopped, the ringing in his ears faded, and his heart stopped. The heat against his lips vanished, and Ichigo looked back into his reflection, the smile on the other’s face possessive and warring with the delicacy of his touch. “Say my name,” he said.
There was no reason he should know it, but in his soul he felt the word gather shape, pulled from the darkness in his own heart. “Zangetsu.”
---
Zangetsu
To hear his own name repeated back with such headstrong clarity was more rewarding than he might have thought. This boy had once been his prison, but this man was his salvation. Nothing short of death would have given him this opportunity. Through Ichigo’s own will, he’d dragged out his own death through agonizing hours, unaware help was waiting in his own soul.
Maybe he should thank Boots, as his King called him. He had grand plans of returning that torture tenfold, but time...time was at odds with his desires.
His host was healed, his new king accepted him wholeheartedly. It wasn’t in Ichigo’s nature to half-ass something, he shouldn’t be surprised, but the glare he gave him as his split lip mended itself, as his cracked and swollen skull realigned, tugged at the darker parts of his heart. Those eyes challenged Zangetsu to hurt him, to take what his King gave and pervert it. He wanted to, but he was a shadow of what he once was. He needed Ichigo, his soul was bound to him too tightly to ever leave. If Ichigo died, he died with him.
He could say that was what motivated him to save them; fear. It wasn’t.
Revenge called to him, bittersweet and sticky, clotting like blood in his desires, and twisting his path. He didn’t want revenge for himself, not anymore. He saw what Ichigo became; he was strong, and to be condemned to a death this pathetic, was criminal.
Their moment outside time was running short, Zangetsu lifted his hand to Ichigo’s face, fingertips tracing a mended jaw, sliding back into his hair to twist painfully in his hair. He leaned in close. “Let me,” he whispered.
Ichigo’s eyes narrowed, thoughtfully trying to unravel him. “You’re going to kill him.”
“He killed you,” Zangetsu countered. “He dared to touch what doesn’t belong to him.”
“You think I belong to you?” Ichigo’s tone was tired, but combative.
Grip tightening in Ichigo’s hair, Zangetsu crawled into his lap, forcing his host to bare his throat. He was still bound until he lent him the strength to escape, he knew the wizard knew that. Ichigo swallowed, his throat pale and streaked with his own blood. He was afraid, but he hid it well. Zangetsu traced a line of blood along his throat and purred, “You’re mine, you always have been.”
“You’re just a demon.”
“I’m your demon. I’ve always been here.”
His King hissed, “I want answers.”
“Reasonable,” Zangetsu soothed. “Let me have your tormentor, and you’ll have em’.
Silence, as his host breathed, and relented. “Fine.”
Zangetsu sank into his body, returning to his soul with the eagerness of returning home. He flexed in his body, testing the bonds around Ichigo’s wrists. Weak. A short jerk of his wrists and the metal popped and split, ringing on the concrete floor as they fell away.
Boots gasped, flashlight blowing out his night sight. It didn’t matter if he could see or not, he could still sense his rotten soul.
“What the fuck are you?”
Zangetsu laughed, leisurely straightening from the chair. He stepped over his pathetic chalk circle and stretched, rolling his shoulders. “Nobody.” There was a click of metal and a gun rang in the warehouse, defeaning bolts of thunder melting in and over each other. Zangetsu didn’t care to count the bullets, most missed, and the two that hit them bounced off, spent shells rolling harmlessly to disturb growing puddles.
The flashlight shook then pointed at the ground. Boots was scrambling to reload, hands shaking and swear words hissed in a desperate prayer. Zangetsu strolled across to him, feeling absolutely no need to rush at all. This man killed his host, his King. A thousand cuts and fractured bones, a gift of pain. Zangetsu didn’t care if he was paid or not, this was merely his first target.
This was a world his host was never meant to live in. Fair was a word most never got to experience, but he was done watching his host be sacrificed and used.
Boots raised the gun to his face, and the instant before he pulled the trigger, Zangetsu slapped it out of his hand. Hand shooting out to tighten around his throat, Zangetsu lifted him clear off the ground, squeezing hard enough for his bones to creak. “Let me pay back the favor.”
---
Ichigo
Zangetsu made sure he was aware for all of it. At first, Ichigo thought it was punishment, some kind of sick gloating, but then he began to realize just how much Zangetsu understood him. He still woke in a terror from the fights he’d emerged from unscathed, covered in blood with no recollection of how it had happened. This was a kindness.
And now he stood, soaking wet in a shady hotel lobby, wondering just who tried to kill him. Just who had nearly succeeded.
He was lucky the rain washed away most of the blood, and he was lucky he wore black. The knife cuts splitting the fabric looked like an edgy trend when he pulled a stolen, black leather jacket over his shoulders. Standing beneath a gutter had provided a cold, impromptu shower to take care of his hair and face. Gross, but as long as he had money, the hotel attendant only gave him dirty looks if he didn’t look like some B-movie hitman.
Unsurprisingly, the second he got into the small room, he threw up. Without prying eyes to judge, it was a lot to deal with. He knew something was wrong with him, but a demon...a demon he just made a contract with. One with rules and stipulations he didn’t fully understand.
He should just be grateful he was alive, shouldn’t he? He didn’t waste his pity on Boots, but the jacket was a sickening reminder.
Frantically shrugging out of the sodden leather, he balled it up and crossed to the window. With shaking fingers, he fumbled with the latch, opened it, and threw it into the alley, littering be damned. At this point he should be worried about evidence, but he wasn’t so sure he cared. If he kept looking at it, he was never going to sleep. It was just an unwanted reminder of his screams, drowned in a forgotten warehouse.
It could have been him lying there in the dark. It should have been. He’d been dead, his heart had stopped. He reached up to touch his chest, feeling it beat, if only to reassure himself that it was.
“You’re alive,” the demon said.
“Shut up,” Ichigo hissed.
“Testy.”
Ichigo shivered by the window, humid air gusting over damp skin. He finally shut and latched it, dripping onto cheap and stained carpet. “You promised me answers.”
“Shower. I’ll bring you clothes.”
The voice echoed from inside the room, not within his own head. Ichigo spun, eyes wide. “You can manifest?”
His mirror image smirked, a self-assured look that also seemed sort of proud. “Got a lot of power you ain’t usin’. Thought I’d help myself.”
That there was no physical boundary between them was startling. “Don’t do that.”
“You don’t give me orders,” Zangetsu murmured. Fear coiled in Ichigo’s stomach and he took a step back, running into a cold window. Zangetsu chided, “No fear, King. I want what you want.”
“Liar,” Ichigo spat.
“Sometimes,” Zangetsu agreed. He was suddenly close, too close, barring him against the window with a palm splayed on the glass. Ichigo looked, watching the heat fog beneath his palm. He was very nearly real. What had he done?
“Look at me,” Zangetsu snarled.
Ichigo’s eyes shot from the window to a flash of fangs and those lips were on his again. They burned with a familiar heat, one he remembered from dreams and nightmares. His gasp brought that scorching heat too close, Zangetsu’s tongue-twisting against his own, feverish and possessive. This was different from that first kiss. This wasn’t laced with the magic of a contract, this was all the demon, all his desire, and hungry need.
It was more than Ichigo was prepared to face. He was kissing himself , but he wasn’t. He would never react that way, or move so animalistic...would he? The demon’s hands were all over him, his head thudding back against the window. Zangetsu bullied his knee between his legs, his thigh pressed to his groin, and Ichigo gasped, hands clenched in his shirt. One solid shove and Zangetsu’s lips left his, both of them struggling to catch their breath. “The fuck was that?” Ichigo asked.
“A kiss.”
His shirt was itchy and wet, heated by mere proximity to the demon. “Why?” he demanded.
The demon seemed amused by the question. “Because I wanted to.” Eyes narrowing in predatory interest, he reached for Ichigo’s chin, tilting his head up. “Because I want to possess you the way you do me. You invade my every waking thought. I have your soul, but I want you, your body, everything .”
“Greedy,” Ichigo hissed.
“Demon,” Zangetsu replied in dry humor.
Roughly shoving the demon away, Ichigo stepped around him and growled, “Bring me something to wear, I’m showering.”
To Ichigo’s immense gratitude, the demon didn’t call his bluff. He was shaken, he wanted a moment with nothing but steam and porcelain and his own screaming thoughts.
He considered that the demon might procure clothes in a less than favorable fashion, but he didn’t think he would hurt anyone. Ichigo wasn’t sure how he knew that, but he knew it as strongly as he knew his own actions.
Sensing the demon leave, Ichigo stripped out of bloodied, ruined clothes, and stepped beneath the spray with a sigh. The water pressure was pathetic, but it was hot and it was clean. He thought he might cry, but he was too tired. The adrenaline that boosted him along to that hotel room was fading fast, a flash of gunpowder fizzling out.
His hands rubbed cheaply perfumed soap over his shoulders and he thought of the demon. Fingernails digging slippery trails into his skin, he remembered what Zangetsu said. Could he trust him? Did he have a choice?
An hour must have passed, because his skin itched with heat and the air was thick with steam. Before he lost consciousness and brained himself in the shower, Ichigo clumsily and quickly toweled off, swaying in eager anticipation of lying down. His body was determined to get him horizontal whether he was ready to be or not.
Wrapping a towel around his waist as an afterthought, Ichigo slouched out of the bathroom to face his demon.
“I’ve seen it all before, you know.”
Eyeing the neatly folded clothes at the corner of the bed, Ichigo shot back. “Didn’t stop you from assaulting me.”
The demon didn’t answer, watching Ichigo pull a shirt over his head. His towel slipped, he caught it, then realized he didn’t have the energy to take his shorts back to the bathroom. Letting it fall with a sigh, Ichigo stepped into the shorts, losing his balance enough that he expected an embarrassing face full of comforter.
Zangetsu’s hand on his shoulder steadied him, firm but thoughtlessly thoughtful. The demon had done it on reflex. Demons didn’t
do
that. Ichigo jerked the shorts on and collapsed onto the bed, refusing to acknowledge the kindness.
A blanket was carelessly draped over his shoulders, and the demon’s voice sounded inside his head. “We’ll talk when ya wake up, aibou.”
It should have been ominous, but Ichigo decided he was too tired to be properly afraid.
---xxx---
The hotel room looked just as bedraggled as Ichigo felt, once the light of day hit it. His back ached, his head hurt, and his sore jaw betrayed just how tightly he must have been clenching his teeth to wake up with soreness and a headache. If Zangetsu hadn’t healed him, he’d have assumed it was the torture, but the demon healed him well; the only side effects were exhaustion. This was all him.
He rolled onto his back, listening to his upstairs neighbor move around the room. He’d slept well into the day, he didn’t even want to know what time it was.
He needed to call someone, tell them he wasn’t dead.
Someone tried to kill him.
Who did he trust?
Who would he get involved?
“Aibou, one thing at a time.”
“Fine,” Ichigo spoke into the empty room. “What did I agree to?” He’d wanted to live, he hadn’t bothered with fine print.
“I just answered you. We’re partners.”
Ichigo tilted his head to the side as if he could see him. That was a mistake. The demon materialized above him, pinning his wrists to the bed. Ichigo’s eyes narrowed up at amber eyes. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” the demon murmured, “We’re in this together. If you die, I die. I was bound to your soul when you were born, but only when you came into your power did I have enough strength to-”
“Possess me,” Ichigo snarled.
Zangetsu’s grip on his wrists tightened, dropping lower. “ Save you .”
“You’re a demon, you’re just saving your own hide.”
The demon cocked his head, his look appraising. “I didn’t have to leave you your free will. I could have taken it from you.”
The fact that the option had even been on the table sent a chill through his blood. “Why didn’t you?” Ichigo questioned.
For some reason, the demon loosened his grip, hands tracing the muscles in his arms in apparent reverence. “I didn’t wanna break you. That ain’t what I want at all.”
Suddenly nervous, Ichigo swallowed. The demon was breaking convention, this wasn’t what he expected to hear at all. “What do you want?”
The demon dropped low, and Ichigo squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t know if it was because he was afraid of what the demon would do, or if he was afraid of the answer. The demon’s breath gusted over his lips, hot, but despite expecting he should smell bad, he didn’t have much of a scent at all. He smelled faintly of burning grass, sweetly desolate. His forehead dropped against his own and Zangetsu answered, “I want you to live. I want you to be happy.”
“What does a demon care if I’m happy?”
Zangetsu whispered, “So much doubt.” His hands shifted to the bed beside him, depressing the mattress under his weight, and he pulled back. Ichigo blinked up at him, confused and expectant? Zangetsu sat back on his legs, staring down at him. “You’re everything. If you aren’t happy, the rain comes.” The demon’s voice dropped, so quiet, he wasn’t sure he spoke them at all. “I hate the rain.”
The demon said it back then, when he was about to die, but now it held so much more context. Zangetsu knew, he knew everything.
The horror must have shown on his face, because the look Zangetsu gave him was oddly placating. “I know you, aibou. I’ve known you your whole life. We’re one and the same.”
Hackles rising, Ichigo snarled, “You’re nothing like me, you’re a demon. An outsider.”
It looked like his words hurt the demon, but that couldn’t be right. Demons didn’t know empathy or pain or sorrow...did they?
“I’m a part of you,” Zangetsu said. “Your darkness is my own. There is no you, or I. Only us.”
Ichigo abruptly sat up and through the demon. Zangetsu dematerialized in fading black swirls, leaving Ichigo alone in the room once again. Ichigo had said he wanted to talk, but he didn’t. He didn’t believe a word. It could be true, but he just couldn’t believe it.
So he changed the subject. “Who killed me?”